The miniaturized, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) encapsulated, reliable, and fully washable system composed of three textile stretchable electrodes and connected electronic module is designed, realized, and integrated to a sportswear. The electronic module is specifically developed and made on a flexible print circuit board in order to facilitate its integration. The software developed enables the recording of the electrocardiogram (ECG) high quality signs together with the skin temperature, the breathing rate, and acceleration outputs that are used for an activity monitoring. The electronic module transmits all the data to a smart phone via low energy Bluetooth. The specific dedicated application displays the ECG signal, the respiration rate, and the activity performed in a real time. This information is sent to a cloud. The system is tested in real conditions of utilization and washed following standards to test its reliability and verify its readiness for the market. The system is a next step in the instrumentation of clothing, comparing to existing heart rate monitoring modules, having a capacity to monitor the activities in real time and being fully washable without mechanical disconnecting of the electronic module as it is a case for almost all existing monitoring devices.

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Abstract:The fuzzy front-end plays a most crucial part in new product development (NPD), leading to the success of product development and product launch in the market. This study proposes a novel method, TTRI_MP, by combining Crawford and Di Benedetto's model and Cooper's model, to strengthen the management of the fuzzy front-end. The proposed method comprises four stages: market exploration and technology forecasting, idea generation and segmentation, portfolio analysis and technology roadmapping (TRM). In the first stage, SWOT was utilized to identify the key strategic areas, and the technology readiness level (TRL) was adopted to position the level of developed technologies. In the second stage, the business concepts were required to go through the viability test and customers, collaborators, competitors and company (4C). In the third stage, the Strategic Position Analysis (SPAN) and Financial Analysis (FAN) developed by IBM were employed in the portfolio analysis to screen out potential NPD projects. In the last stage, the selected NPD projects were linked with their functions and technologies in the TRM chart. The method was successfully implemented by a research team working on a flexible fabric supercapacitor at the Taiwan Textile Research Institute (TTRI).

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